The MRC’s Loud And Lame War On NewsGuard, Part 6

In order to punish NewsGuard for exposing the shoddiness of right-wing websites, the Media Research Center is cheering right-wing lawfare and intimidation of the private company.

The Media Research Center has been waging war for years against website rating service NewsGuard for exposing just how shoddy and unreliable right-wing media is. After spending much of 2023 demanding that its fellow Republicans punish NewsGuard for exposing the shoddiness of right-wing media, the MRC got its narratives rewarded with a provision inserted into a defense funding bill that would restrict government contracts with firms like NewsGuard. But even that wasn’t enough — Luis Cornelio raged in a December 2023 post that the Biden administration will find a way around the biased provision:

President Joe Biden signed on Friday the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which included a pro-free speech provision effectively prohibiting the Department of Defense from contracting with radical leftist entities that discriminate against right-leaning media. Hours later, however, Biden invoked a George Soros-tied Supreme Court case to hint at his potential rebellion against the provision he just signed into law.

“While I am pleased to support the critical objectives of the NDAA, I note that certain provisions of the Act raise concerns,” Biden whined, drawing attention to Section 1555(a) of the NDAA. Specifically, the provision prohibits the Pentagon from doing business with NewsGuard, the infamous Internet traffic cop, and the Global Disinformation Index, the blacklisting rag, among others who would use taxpayer dollars to censor.

Biden claimed the Pentagon “will comply with this provision by requiring recipients of such contracts to certify that they will not place the Department’s advertisements based on the enumerated grounds.” But here’s the caveat. Biden cunningly warned that the Pentagon will also comply with the “First Amendment,” claiming that the government cannot force entities — in this case, NewsGuard and GDI — to adopt a specific ideological belief.

Most strikingly, Biden cited a distantly analogous and readily distinguishable case brought by the Soros-funded Alliance for Open Society International to defend his take. The Court held in that case that the federal government “may not use funding and the threat of the loss of funding as a method for the regulation of speech and policies of non-governmental organizations.”

Cornelio then quoted his boss complaining that their game was called out:

MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider torched Biden’s pledge to usurp the pro-free speech provision by citing “one of the biggest censors” in the world as “his get out of jail card.”

Schneider said, “The U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from censoring political speech; likewise government cannot collude with private companies to violate the First Amendment. Several courts already rebuked and ordered him to stop colluding with Big Tech. Congress has also stepped in to pass a law to force Biden to comply with the Constitution. It appears nothing will deter Biden from using government to silence his political opponents.”

Of course, NewsGuard doesn’t “censor” anyone — it merely tells the truth, and for all its right-wing ranting, the MRC has never proven otherwise. The whining continued in a Feb. 1 post by Joseph Vazquez filled with stenography for his boss:

MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell blasted the top brass at leftist internet traffic cop NewsGuard for once again trying to malign research exposing its bias rather than addressing its own shortcomings.

NewsGuard co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz spear-headed their company’s “Social Impact 2023” annual report in which they whined about MRC’s third study exposing that the firm drastically favors leftist media outlets in its ratings. MRC’s latest analysis, using the AllSides Media Bias Chart, showed how NewsGuard blessed left-leaning media (e.g. The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, CNN and Vox) with a stellar average score of 91/100 while slapping right-leaning media (e.g. New York Post, The Washington Times, Breitbart and Washington Examiner) with an abysmally low 65/100 score.

NewsGuard panned the analysis as “fatally flawed” and arbitrarily accused MRC — AGAIN — of having “cherry-picked” the websites we researched and analyzed using its so-called “apolitical ratings.” That’s despite the fact that the MRC relied on another organization’s list entirely.

Bozell blasted Brill and Crovitz in response: “Thank you for recognizing the work of the Media Research Center in your annual report, even if it was to mischaracterize our widely recognized study of NewsGuard’s bias.”

Vazquez didn’t demonstrate that anything NewsGuard did was wrong or unfairly mischaracterizing of his employer; instead, he huffed that “MRC didn’t pre-determine how the results of any of the analyses would turn out. And after three studies, the needle of NewsGuard’s leftist bias has barely budged.” Of course, that could also be a sign that NewsGuard’s ratings are correct and that Vazquez and Bozell are simply complaining about that accuracy.

Christian Baldwin touted more right-wing lawfare against NewsGuard in a Feb. 8 post:

Texas asked the courts to put a halt to the vast web of online censorship operations, funded by the State Department.

New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) announced Wednesday that it filed for a preliminary injunction requesting that the court immediately block Biden’s State Department from funding censorship projects like the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard. “No arm of the federal government has any business participating in the suppression and blacklisting of domestic media based on its content and viewpoint,” said Peggy Little, Senior Litigation Counsel for NCLA. “The State Department scheme infringes all Americans’ First Amendment rights. Permitting such tools of oppression would render the First Amendment meaningless.”

If affirmed by the court, the injunction would prohibit the federal government from funding or encouraging “the development or use of technology that targets in whole, or in part, Americans’ speech or the American press.”

NCLA is representing The State of Texas, The Daily Wire, and the Federalist who allege that by funding censorship projects through the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, the Biden administration is suppressing the press.

Baldwin failed to disclose the right-wing slant of the Daily Wire, the Federalist and the New Civil Liberties Alliance — which means he’s hiding the partisan nature of their attack on NewsGuard. Instead, he whined that the unreliability of those sites were revealed:

In an October 2022 report, the GDI listed both The Daily Wire and The Federalist, two of the plaintiffs, in its list of “riskiest sites” for advertisers.

NewsGuard, the other alleged malefactor, also had it out for both The Daily Wire and the Federalist, rating them each as unreliable. NewsGuard gave The Daily Wire a rating of 49.5 out of 100 indicating that users and advertisers should “proceed with caution.” Federalist, however, has an abysmal rating of 12.5 out of 100 and a warning to “proceed with maximum caution.”

Baldwin offered nothing to dispute the accuracy of those ratings, let alone that NewsGuard and GDI “had it out” for those right-wing websites. He’s simply spouting the lazy broad-brush argument that those low ratings are ipso facto evidence of bias — the only real thing that MRC has claimed all along in its war against NewsGuard.

Cheering lawfare

A Feb. 16 post by Christian Baldwin cheered how right-wing congressmen were targeting government contracts with NewsGuard, which would seem to be all about destroying a company’s free speech:

Four members of a House Armed Services subcommittee have issued a new letter demanding answers from a major advertising agency contracted by the U.S. Air Force for its shady connections to leftist media ratings firms with a track record of trying to bankrupt right-leaning media.

Reps. Jim Banks (R-IN), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Mike Waltz (R-FL) and Jack Bergman (R-MI) issued the letter on Feb. 9. Citing the failures of the U.S. military to meet its recruiting goals, the letter demands answers from the GSD&M CEO Duff Steward, whose agency received a $741 million contract from the Air Force in an effort to attract new recruits.

The lawmakers sought information to determine whether the ad company distributes Air Force ads in a politically biased manner and conducts business with website traffic cops NewsGuard and the George Soros-tied Global Disinformation Index (GDI).

[…]

The investigation is meant to enforce Section 1555 of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act which “requires that any entity placing advertisements on behalf of the Department of Defense certify that the entity does not place advertisements in news sources based on personal or institutional political preferences or biases, or determinations of misinformation.”

But aren’t these right-wing congressmen using the power of government regulation to impose their own personal preference or biases in order to harm a company?

The next day, Jeffrey Lord wrote a column pushing the exact same narrative:

What we have here is typical of the way the federal bureaucracy works. Way below the visibility line, some lefty bureaucrat buried deep inside sends taxpayer funds to promote X lefty cause of the moment.

In this case the subject is the media and the real world effect of using a left-leaning media company – NewsGuard in this case- to promote lefty cause X. That cause here being putting some sort of brake on US military recruitment.

[…]

Bearing that in mind, the fact that this lefty outfit is charged by Congressman Banks with injecting “woke Pentagon policies — including the use of left-wing media monitors” into military recruitment drives? And that as a result this has “been choking military recruitment”? Hmmm.

Lord offered no proof that NewsGuard is “lefty,” and its ratings of right-wing outlets do not count as proof. Indeed, all he referenced is the MRC’s shoddy and partisan work. Still, he huffed:

This letter from Congressman Banks and his colleagues is a serious look at just how, in the high-tech world that is the 21st century, left-leaning media can have a serious impact on, in this case, the very basic instrument of advertising for a strong, fully recruited, American military. With no one taking notice.

These four Members of Congress – again they would be Reps. Banks, Waltz, Bergman, and Stefanik – should be applauded for stepping up and taking action. The liberal media response that may be coming be damned.

Good for them.

Joseph Vazquez cheered a right-wing radio host parroting the MRC’s anti-NewsGuard propaganda in an April 2 post:

Blaze Media host Glenn Beck emphasized the utter ridiculousness of leftist website traffic cops like NewsGuard masquerading as unbiased truth gatekeepers, and relied on original MRC Free Speech America research to do it.

Beck ripped into the discredited NewsGuard that has been outed as a leftist operation targeting the advertising dollars of right-leaning media sources during the March 27 edition of Glenn TV. In his X post promoting the segment, Beck referred to NewsGuard as “propaganda” for continuing to behave like an Orwellian arbiter of truth, despite the glaring evidence of its so-called ratings system consistently being shown to favor left-leaning media while punishing the right.

[…]

NewsGuard’s treatment of right-leaning media got even worse. “Left” and “lean left” outlets maintained their stellar average of 91/100, while the average for “right” and “lean right” outlets dipped to an outrageously abysmal 65/100, indicating a 26-point disparity.

As usual, Vazquez is falsely portraying correlation as causation — he offered no actual evidence that this disparity is result of NewsGuard’s purported “liberal bias” and not an objective look at the questionable factual record of right-wing outlets. Vazquez then weirdly stuck this at the end of his column, in bold italic:

EDITOR’S NOTE: Readers should be aware that MRC’s NewsGuard studies only use the AllSides media bias list to analyze NewsGuard ratings of outlets considered by AllSides to be “left” and “lean left” or “right” and “lean right.” It does not necessarily reflect MRC’s characterizations of these outlets.

In fact, AllSides is a right-wing company whose assessments of the media largely reflect those of the MRC itself — portraying anything that’s not explicitly right-wing as “left-leaning.” Given that, Vazquez’s little editor’s note seems superfluous.

Intimidation

The MRC thinks its bullying war against NewsGuard is having some tangible results in allegedly scaring the website-ratings firm into being slightly more reflective of right-wing narratives. Vazquez tried to claim victory in an April 9 post:

NewsGuard discovered that The New York Times was never worth its flawless 100/100 score, but apparently only after MRC Free Speech America repeatedly called it out.

NewsGuard finally downgraded The Times’ perfect score Feb.1 to a lukewarm 87.5/100. NewsGuard’s beef with the legacy leftist publication was that it “no longer meets NewsGuard standards for handling the difference between news and opinion responsibly.” Wow, what a revelation! Has the dystopian website traffic cop been living under a rock?

The head-turning move by the media ratings firm came after MRC released three studies of NewsGuard’s ridiculously skewed ratings system across three consecutive years consistently showing NewsGuard heavily favoring left-leaning publications like The Times over right-leaning media. MRC has repeatedly called NewsGuard out for attempting to legitimize The Times as an effectively flawless, balanced outlet, despite mountains of evidence showing otherwise. MRC even released a mini-documentary in February 2023 on the firm’s bias.

“The New York Times has been the same left-wing rag for decades,” said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider in a statement. But suddenly, said Schneider, after MRC research led Congress to get serious about “preventing the Department of Defense from funding the NewsGuard censorship regime, the folks at NewsGuard finally found some religion and are starting to better reflect what The Times has always been: An extreme, left-wing biased outlet.”

In fact, those studies did not prove that NewsGuard has a “ridiculously skewed ratings system” — they simply proved that the MRC has irrational anger about the shoddiness of right-wing websites being documented, and it did nothing to prove the credibility of those operations. And Schneider discredits himself by slinging overheated and inaccurate terms like “left-wing rag” at the Times while providing absolutely no comprehensive research to back it up. He would never describe, say, the New York Post as a “right-wing rag” despite the fact that it’s much more slavishly devoted to its right-wing agenda than the Times is to any “left-wing” one.

Vazquez joined in the baselessly vicious invective by lashing out at the paper’s 1619 Project as “racially charged” (given the project focused on the history of slavery, why wouldn’t it be?), “discredited” (he cites the right-wing National Review smearing it, hardly an objective analysis) and “anti-American” (why would it be “anti-American” to know more about one’s history?), then smearing the writer in charge of it, Nikole Hannah-Jones, as an “insufferable activist” (we suspect she’s not as insufferable as Vazquez). He then whined that the paper “doesn’t properly distinguish between news and opinion” — an accusation neither he nor any other MRC employee has ever hurled at any right-wing media organization, even when that lack of separation is painfully blatant.

An April 12 post by Nicholas Fondacaro then tried to bully NewsGuard into downgrading another non-right-wing that has long been the target of the MRC’s ire and was the target of another partisan war:

On Tuesday, National Public Radio business editor Uri Berliner blew the whistle on the station’s “assembly line” of liberally biased reporting, which he said was being cranked out “one story after another” framed with the leftist worldview. The expose put NPR under the microscope and put a serious blemish on the organization. But the question now is: will that blemish finally force media-scoring agency NewsGuard to downgrade NPR’s perfect 100/100 rating?

In his essay entitled “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust,” Berliner explained: “There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.”

Berliner appeared on NewsNation with host Chris Cuomo Tuesday night and described the current company culture as “a much narrower kind of niche thinking, a group think that’s really clustered around various selective progressive views that don’t – they don’t allow enough air and enough spaciousness to consider all kinds of perspectives.”

That certainly didn’t sound like the type of environment that would be conducive to fair, objective, and unbiased reporting. Especially if their default framing for reporting was that Republican policies were considered a “dire threat” to the country.

But as of the publication of this piece, NewsGuard still had NPR rated at perfect 100/100.

Fondacaro offered no evidence that NewsGuard offered instantaneous ratings changes in response to partisan activism.

When NewsGuard refused to acquiesce to the MRC’s partisan demands, Fondacaro spent an April 17 post whining about it:

Last week, now-former NPR business editor Uri Berliner drew the ire of the station’s new, far-left CEO after he called out NPR for allowing the liberal worldview to dominate the newsroom. Berliner’s act of journalistic integrity ultimately cost him his job; he was suspended and ultimately resigned. But despite NPR’s retaliation against a whistleblower and others coming forward to corroborate Berliner’s claims, left-wing media rating organization NewsGuard maintained NPR’s perfect 100/100 rating.

[…]

Berliner’s criticisms of NPR weren’t business or employment-related (such as pay or working conditions) and had everything to do with the politics influencing the news product the organization was putting out. And thus, was an issue NewsGuard should’ve been taking seriously, especially considering that Berliner was getting support from other former NPR staffers.

At this point, a lack of action by NewsGuard to downgrade NPR’s score appeared to be in defiance of the facts and in opposition to the support Berliner was receiving from many right-wingers.

Or,. you know, it’s evidence that NewsGuard isn’t easily cowed by partisan activists devoting serious money and resources to try and destroy it. Fondacaro concluded by rehashing other score-settling by claiming that NewsGuard “recently downgraded The New York Times after the Media Research Center called them out multiple times.”

Getting angrier

The MRC’s partisan smear campaign does not appear to be hurting NewsGuard’s business, so it’s getting angrier. Gabriela Pariseau ranted in a May 2 post:

You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours seems to be NewsGuard’s attitude toward OpenAI.

Gordon Crovitz, the Co-editor and chief of so-called media ratings firm NewsGuard, wrote an article praising OpenAI artificial intelligence ChatGPT’s use of “Trustworthy Journalism” in its answers. But trustworthy according to whom? Well, NewsGuard’s biased ratings system, of course. This comes just two and a half months after ChatGPT refused to answer which news sources are the worst and instead directed MRC Free Speech America researchers to look to NewsGuard ratings for answers.

“Trusting legacy media to train AI is just about as ridiculous as chickens trusting a fox to guard the hen house,” said Michael Morris, Director of MRC Free Speech America. “But that’s exactly what NewsGuard is asking users to do here, and that can only lead to one thing: a really bad day for the chickens.”

In his recent article, Crovitz applauded OpenAI for its recent licensing agreement with The Financial Times (FT), which just so happens to have a 100/100 NewsGuard rating.

With that attack failing, Pariseau lashed out at the Financial Times for not being a right-wing lapdog, with a bit of Soros derangement on the side:

FT has repeatedly shown its bias over the years including when in 2018 it made leftist billionaire George Soros its “person of the year.” The outlet has also propped up President Joe Biden when his bad economic policies predictably led to bad economic outcomes. “Unemployment rate in US falls unexpectedly to 13.3%,” FT wrote in a headline. The Financial Times editor and columnist Edward Luce also parroted claims of the Russian collusion hoax when he was interviewed on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Pariseau didn’t explain how giving Soros that designation equated to “bias.” She also offered no evidence that the headline claim about unemployment was in any way inaccurate. And the MRC link to Luce’s segment about the “Russian collusion hoax” itself linked to an analysis that also stated of the Mueller report: “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Pariseau also dutifully repeated her employer’s designated talking points: “Crovitz is also in no position to label what news is ‘trustworthy’ as his own ratings firm has repeatedly shown bias and relaxed standards toward leftist media outlets while giving right-leaning media outlets low scores. MRC Free Speech America has repeatedly shown that NewsGuard’s ratings system favors leftist media outlets.” As we have repeatedly documented, the MRC’s “media research” on NewsGuard is driven by partisan animus and demands false balance by assuming all media outlets are equal and refusing to admit that right-wing outlets are, in fact, right-wing.

Catherine Salgado served up another attack on a NewsGuard official in a June 12 post, with some added whataboutism:

NewsGuard’s co-CEO advocated financial censorship and sneered at the American principle of free speech in a recent interview.

During a C-SPAN appearance June 9 to promote his new book, The Death of Truth, NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill sneeringly and hypocritically pontificated about those who “actually believe in reality, and people who don’t.”

Brill mourned the fact that anyone can post online without censorship from “gatekeepers,” making the following shockingly anti-free speech statement: “The idea that everybody can have an opinion, [for instance] about who won the election … I think that is a dangerous idea.”

While touting himself and NewsGuard as online arbiters of truth versus “misinformation,” Brill himself made glaringly inaccurate statements.

“The conservatives argue that the social media platforms veer to the left, when, in fact, all the data I’ve ever seen says that they seem to favor right-wing voices over left-wing voices,” Brill absurdly asserted.

Yet multiple MRC Free Speech America studies have shown that right-leaning voices are targeted for censorship more than leftist voices.

Again, those “studies” denied the bias and factual inaccuracies of right-wing outlets and cherry-picked issues with non-right-wing outlets whine ignoring how those outlets worked to correct its errors. Salgado further huffed:

At another point in the interview, Brill dismissed censorship of the Great Barrington Declaration, a 2020 document signed by over 60,000 experts that critiqued COVID-19 protocols, alleging, “The notion that that was suppressed, it wasn’t suppressed. It’s just people just looked at it and said ‘that’s totally bogus.’”

Yet The Twitter Files exposed how Big Tech specifically targeted the declaration and its co-authors.

As ConWebWatch has pointed out, the Great Barrington Declaration dangerously promoted “herd immunity” for COVID at a time when a vaccine had not yet been developed and though it was unclear that herd immunity would even work (and it doesn’t, given the need for regular vaccinations).

Salgado called on her boss to personally attack Brill:

Vice President of MRC Free Speech America Dan Schneider slammed Brill’s record of misinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop. “When pressed to answer a serious question, Brill had to admit that he was dead wrong about the Hunter Biden laptop,” Schneider said. “Brill’s NewsGuard, however, pretends to be an unassailable arbiter of online reliability. Yet more hypocrisy from NewsGuard’s Steven Brill.”

Slagado then whined that Brill argued COVID disinformation is not actual “free speech”:

Throughout his interview, indeed, Brill argued that supposed expert consensus should always be prioritized over free speech, despite making contradictory or false statements more than once.

Brill even advocated for financial censorship regarding speculations about COVID-19 vaccine-induced deaths, quoting medical experts whom even Brill was forced to admit had been wildly wrong about some Covid-19 recommendations like not touching cardboard for days.

“There is no way that any social media platform should be free … just to publish that stuff and get the associated advertising revenue,” Brill claimed of the vaccine debate, smugly suggesting that C-SPAN should divide callers not based on political views but on “who, you know, actually believe[s] in reality.”

Salgado didn’t explain why lies and misinformation should never be fact-checked or corrected.

Cornelio cheered right-wing lawfare against NewsGuard in a June 14 post:

Congress is finally taking the dystopian website traffic cop NewsGuard to task for its years-long vendetta against right-leaning media.

On Thursday, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into NewsGuard over its assault on free speech and its taxpayer-funded contracts with the federal government.

In a letter to NewsGuard CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) requested the submission of documents related to the firm’s ties to the federal government as a potential “non-transparent agent of censorship campaigns.”

This congressional probe follows a lawsuit filed by The Daily Wire and The Federalist — in conjunction with the State of Texas — against the federal government for awarding nearly $750,000 of taxpayer money to NewsGuard in exchange for licensing its data.Comer stated that the investigation will also examine NewsGuard’s abysmally poor adherence to its own policies designed to “ guard against appearances of bias” and “how it tries to avoid and manage potential conflicts of interest arising from its investors and other influences.” Moreover, per Comer:

“One concerned journalist expressed fear that NewsGuard’s activities are an extension of federal efforts—since struck down by courts—to coerce social media companies and to ‘destroy the financial survival of disfavored outlets…”

The congressional investigation will also scrutinize NewsGuard’s “actions that may have the impact of delegitimizing factually accurate information,” Comer added.

Cornelio added personal attacks on NewsGuard writers by Comer.

Another post by Cornelio that day touted even more right-wing legislative targeting of NewsGuard and fellow MRC target Ad Fontes:

Somebody do a wellness check on the embattled media ratings firms NewsGuard and Ad Fontes.

On Friday, the House of Representatives passed 217 to 199 the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), featuring a provision that blocks the Biden administration from exploiting taxpayer dollars for contracts with media rating entities like NewsGuard and Ad Fontes.

This provision is a significant win for free speech advocates and marks the second year in a row that the House, led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), has put the Department of Defense (DoD) on alert after it controversially awarded $750,000 to NewsGuard for access to its ratings data.

The new provision prohibits the DoD from partnering with entities that do not “rate or rank news or information sources for the factual accuracy of their content” or “provide ratings or opinions on news or information sources regarding misinformation, bias, adherence to journalistic standards, or ethics.”

In a statement to MRC, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) lauded the House for passing the 2025 NDAA. “This year’s NDAA will refocus our military on its core mission of defending America and its interests across the globe,” he said.

In 2023, Speaker Johnson and Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) led efforts to include similar language in the FY24 NDAA to prevent the DoD from contracting with these controversial media ratings firms.

MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider hailed McCormick and Johnson’s leadership. “Speaker Johnson and Congressman McCormick have been fierce fighters for free speech,” he said. “They have done so much behind the scenes and, frankly, do not get enough credit for what they have done to save the most important right we have to keep our constitutional democracy alive.”

Again: All of this is based on partisan attacks that have nothing to do with legitimate “media research.” The MRC — and by extension House Republicans — are trying to destroy companies for not sucking up to them and spouting their preferred partisan narratives.